The House passed the National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday by a 216-212 vote, advancing a $1.15 trillion defense policy bill that would rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War. The measure now moves into the Senate and final negotiations, where its renaming language and attached policy riders will face another test.
Mike Rogers on the House floor
Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the vote was part of a longer process. “This bill will do that and much more,” he said on the House floor, adding, “It will build the ready, capable and lethal fighting force we need to deter China an”.
Rogers also said the United States needs to reverse decades of underinvestment and neglect in the nation’s armed forces and defense industrial base. His comments came as the bill set the spending framework for national security and opened the door to a fight over whether the Department of Defense should be renamed in law.
TRICARE and service members
The bill would provide a pay raise next year ranging from 5% to 7% for service members, depending on rank. It also includes a prohibition on gender-related medical care under TRICARE and eases hurdles for service members to carry a privately owned firearm on base.
Those provisions sit inside a bill that Republicans leaders paired with President Donald Trump’s request for $1.15 trillion in national security spending. Speaker Mike Johnson was working to accommodate Republican lawmakers who wanted the SAVE America Act included in must-pass bills, and Republican leaders attached Trump’s elections overhaul bill to the defense bill after it passed.
Senate and final negotiations
The annual defense policy bill is usually one of the more bipartisan measures Congress takes up each year, but that was not the case this time. Democrats objected to steep spending increases for the Pentagon and to conservative social policy riders included in the bill.
Pete Hegseth listened at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday at Capitol Hill in Washington, a day before the House vote. The Senate and final negotiations will determine whether the House-passed version survives, including the Department of War renaming and the SAVE America Act attachment, or whether a different bipartisan final product takes shape.
